SOE News

Peabody Pulse

Graduate Student Orientation today

New graduate students will be welcomed by the School of Education at Graduate Student Orientation today, starting at 3 p.m. in the Gerald Unks Lecture Hall, Room 104. The event will include welcomes by Dean Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, others from the School, and student representatives. Program area breakout sessions will be held after the introductory session, followed by a session in which current graduate students answer questions about programs and how to engage in the life of Carolina. The day concludes with a 6 p.m. social hosted by the Graduate Student Association at the Back Bar at the Top of the Hill restaurant.

Kelly Ryoo wins additional NSF funding; work profiled by ‘Endeavors’

Kelly Ryoo, assistant professor of learning sciences, has won new funding from the National Science Foundation to support the hiring of an undergraduate student to work on her “dynamic visualizations” project. Ryoo earlier this year won a $674,000 CAREER grant from the NSF to work with 8th grade science teachers to improve their instruction for English language learners through the use of visualization technologies. The additional funding will support the hiring of a Computer Science major to explore how to collect and use interaction data from dynamic visualizations to support linguistically diverse students’ science learning. Meanwhile, Ryoo’s work has been profiled by Endeavors, Carolina’s research magazine. The story is here.

Two SOE doctoral students among Education Pioneers award candidates

Two doctoral students in the School of Education – Eldrin Deas and William Jackson – are among the candidates for an award from Education Pioneers, a group that works to recruit, develop and build connections among professionals who work to solve problems that affect students. Deas and Jackson are being considered for the organization’s EPic and Scott Morgan Award. Both Deas and Jackson were Education Pioneers Fellows in 2013. Candidates can receive votes for the award at the Education Pioneers website. Voting, in which anyone may cast a ballot every day, goes through Wednesday. Voting takes place here.

Shelby Dawkins-Law, a doctoral student in Policy, Leadership and School Improvement, has been selected as a 2016-2018 Jackson Scholar by the University Council for Educational Administration. The Jackson Scholars Network is designed to create opportunities for graduate students of color to take advantage of formal networking, mentoring, and professional development opportunities. Among other activities, Jackson Scholars participate in the UCEA’s annual convention, which this year will be held in Detroit in November.

Alumna Tawanna Allen elected president of the NCPEA

Tawanna Allen (Ed.D. ’06) has been elected president of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration. She is the first African-American woman to be elected to the position. Allen is an associate professor of educational administration at High Point University.

Doctoral student Ronda Bullock featured in UNC video

A project being led by Ph.D. candidate Ronda Taylor Bullock is featured in a video and story shared on the UNC homepage. Bullock’s team won a CUBE social innovation grant to support her “we are” project, which works to highlight what she describes as systemic and ideological racism. The grant is being used to support events such as an educator conference and a children’s summer camp. The video is available here.

School of Education T shirts available

The Graduate Student Association has School of Education T shirts available for purchase. Order shirts online, with options for pickup at Peabody Hall or delivery to your home. The link for ordering for free pickup at Peabody is here, and the link for shipping to another address is here.

Donate to the school supply drive

The Graduate Student Association is holding a donation drive to collect school supplies to donate to local schools. A donation basket will be located in the graduate student lounge on the second floor of Peabody through Friday.

Alumnus Stephen Sonderman’s work profiled

Stephen Sonderman (M.A.T. ’99) has an interesting job. He travels around the world giving away soccer balls. Sonderman, Asia Director for One World Play Project, works to build programs that engage children in play. Sonderman has worked in the field of sport for development for the past decade. One World Play Project donates unpoppable soccer balls so that children in under-developed areas can have fun playing with them. Sonderman and his work is profiled here.

Publications, presentations, etc.

Lora Cohen-Vogel has had two articles published in Teachers College Record. One involved Policy, Leadership and School Improvement student, Allison Rose Socol. They are entitled “A model of continuous improvement in high schools: A process for research, innovation design, implementation, and scale” and “Design and implementation of high school reform—Perspectives from research and practice.”

With Policy, Leadership and School Improvement alumni Ariel Tichnor-Wagner and Christopher Harrison, Lora Cohen-Vogel published “Cultures of learning and professional behavior in highly effective schools” in Education Administration Quarterly.

Over the summer, Lora Cohen-Vogel spoke at MDRC, the social science research firm in New York City, and The Public School Forum in Raleigh about continuous improvement research.

George Noblit worked with a project in Scotland this summer on meta-ethnography which Noblit helped establish in the late 1980s.

Leigh Hall had a piece published in Research in the Teaching of English. “I don’t really have anything good to say” examines how one teacher worked to shape middle school students’ talk about texts.

Fenwick English had a published interview in the AERA special interest group on Educational Change dealing with school innovation based on his recent book on the writings of Pierre Bourdieu. He was also senior author of a concept paper to establish an NCPEA International Educational Leadership Center at Eastern Michigan University based on the writings regarding relational sociology and its promise for changing the nature of educational leadership research.

Michael Little, a UNC Royster Fellow in the Policy, Leadership and School Improvement program, had his paper, "Measuring More: Schools, Teachers, and the Development of Kindergartners Executive Function Skills," accepted for publication in AERA Open. Another paper, "Facilitating the Transition to Kindergarten: What ECLS-K Data Tell Us about School Practices Then and Now,” co-authored with his advisor, Lora Cohen-Vogel, and a colleague at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Chris Curran, was also accepted for publication in AERA Open.

Doctoral student Alex Lowry made a presentation – “The path not taken: A plan for equitable technology integration in Chatham County Schools (NC),” at the 2016 ESRI GIS in Education conference. San Diego. Lowry’s paper – "Transform Spatial: Making the case for spatial thinking in higher education" – was published in Crossing the border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies.

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Got news?

Have you got news to share? A new paper published? Make a conference presentation? Win a grant? Do you know of an upcoming SOE event of interest to others? A shoutout, about yourself or someone you know? Send your news to Mike Hobbs at michael_hobbs@unc.edu.